[Gengis Khan]

You can safely discount whatever "the Hindu" has to say. Its anything but "Hindu" its a hardcore CPIM communist mouthpiece.

That said, the issue has more to do with international politics and national interest and not rational argument. Frankly India's Iran (or anti-Iran) vote will largely depend upon how far the US is willing to go with India on the nuclear deal. Fact is, the present Congress government must have a very very very good reason to give to the people for it to be able to side with the US. Voting against Iran (India's only ally in the Islamic world) will virtually seal the fate of the multi-billion dollar oil and gas deal with Iran. India has already lost out to China on Central Asian oil and gas contracts. Loosing out on Iranian oil will put India in a real tight spot. It wont take long for China to make headway into Iranian.

The Indo-US nuclear deal already in doldrums, India is not ready to bring in too many nuclear reactors under the international safe-guard regime. That would be detrimental to the size of our nuclear arsenal.

Moreover the Democrats and the US Congress are against the nuclear deal. Kerry has clearly stated that he would be in favour of such as deal only if similar offer is made to Pakistan. (Surely he must be nuts!)

Bush will be coming to India in Feb and there is not much time to work out things. Lets hope for a miracle.

[familyop]

The Iranian government and military are going down. That's virtually inevitable. Then the new government in Iran will sell oil and gas according to demands in the world market and without any condition in favor of terrorism.